


soft in the middle

by thememoriesfire



Category: Glee
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-30
Updated: 2011-06-30
Packaged: 2017-10-20 21:21:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/217213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thememoriesfire/pseuds/thememoriesfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Faye, who wanted Brittany and Santana as girl scout troop leaders.</p>
            </blockquote>





	soft in the middle

So here’s the deal:

Brittany is a manipulative little  _bitch_.

While most of Santana is proud of her for it, the rest of her just can’t believe she was stupid enough to  _believe_ Britt’s bullshit about having found the perfect summer job for both of them.

Really, this may be Santana’s own fault, for not asking to see the job description and just taking Brittany’s words for it.   _Brittany,_ who literally learned the latter half of the alphabet six months ago.  Brittany, who also very cleverly decided to read the job description out by the pool, wearing a bikini so small it’s probably illegal in Wyoming or some other prude state.

“Oh, they want people who are good with fire and stuff, and who can climb trees.  You climb the tree outside of my bedroom all the time, San, this would be great for us,” is what she’d said, all smiles and long legs and holy fuck, how is a girl supposed to pay attention when all of that is on display and yet completely out of reach?

“What’s it pay?” she’d asked, just to say something instead of staring Brittany like some sort of sex-starved predator for another five minutes.

“Um… you know I don’t do math.  But they say there’s lunch, so.”

*

She’d agreed at the time because of the sex.  Or the lack of it.  

Brittany, since nationals, has been on this ‘taking it slow’ kick and just generally  _not_ giving off any vibes that Santana was going to get to tap that.  It’s been like two months since they got back together, and yeah, kissing with feelings is  _great_ but so are orgasms.  At least, Santana thinks they are.  It’s been a fucking lifetime since she’s had any.

Apparently orgasms have to be earned, though.

Cue the summer job.

*

She looks like a four year old’s idea of an army ranger, or something.

Rachel Berry probably created this entire sham of a job just to take belated revenge for the  _Willow_ joke.  There’s the green pseudo-army uniform and beret, which are already lacking in dignity, not to mention the ridiculous sash she apparently  _has_ to wear—but nothing is quite as stupid and humiliating as her  _actual job_ , as troop leader:

Santana “Satan” Lopez is currently crouching down on the ground with a set of twigs that really aren’t going to light themselves on fire unless she can just will the end of the world to start with her  _mind,_ or something.

“Good with fire”.  Jesus Christ.  This is why God invented lighters, rags, and kerosene—not to mention shitty old cars and losers like Jacob Ben-Israel, which are both much more fun to set ablaze than  _bits of tree_.

Something about the look on her face must warn Brittany, who says, with a frown, “But the outfits.  We look cute, don’t we?”

Santana grumbles and keeps rubbing the twigs together, because let’s face it, Cheerios has prepared her for menial repetition and mind-numbing boredom more than anything else in life could.

*

Of course, it only gets worse, because she’s not making fire for absolutely no reason.  Oh no.

When she next looks up, as Brittany says, “Hi”, beaming over somewhere to the left, there they are.

Twelve little girls, staring at her with wide eyes, until one—wearing ridiculously large glasses and a very owlish expression—finally says, “Are you our troop leaders?”

Santana glares at all of them, and makes a mental reminder to fucking look up if gagging small girls and hanging them upside down from tree branches would be illegal or just kind of immoral.  

(Jail, not really something she was planning on.  Hell?  Yeah, she pretty much packed her bags at age eight, when on a dare she flipped up Sister Maria Theresa’s habit during morning prayers and exposed her to the entire school.)

“Sure are,” Brittany says, already walking over and kneeling down and making noises and ooh-ing and ah-ing at everyone’s outfits which,  _they’re all the fucking same_ , and so Santana stares back at her pointless non-campfire and then finally decides that fuck it, she is done with this.

A small brunette child with a slight overbite and a massive nose appears at her side and stares at her seriously.

(For one second, Santana stupidly wonders when Berry had time to spawn.)

“That’s cheating,” she says, sternly, when Santana tries to and fails to hide her lighter in time.

“It’s not cheating, it’s using what you’ve got.  That’s smart.  Street smart.”

“But what if you don’t have one?  Also, I’m nine, I can’t use a lighter.”

Santana counts to five in her head and then says, “What’s your name?”

“Michelle,” the girl says.  Of course it is.  It even fucking  _sounds_  like Rachel. 

“Well, Michelle; here’s the deal.  You’re going to look over there for a second,” Santana says, pointing over towards a completely uninteresting tree, “and when you look back, I’ll have started the fire.  Like magic.”

Michelle narrows her eyes, clearly skeptical, and then says, “Is that an order, ma’am?”

An order.  Wait, she can  _order them around_?

Santana grins after a moment and says, “Sure is, little trooper.”

With a huff, Michelle faces the other way, and by the time Brittany and all the other kids make their way over, Santana is rubbing two twigs together again—right in front of a fire that, if she doesn’t get it under control soon, might actually burn down the entire clearing they’re in.

“You’re awesome.  Isn’t she awesome?” Brittany says, with a pleased smile.

Santana’s so in there, it’s not even funny.

*

Another thing to look up on the internet:

Is it legal to kill a nine year old for being the world’s largest narc-ing cockblock?

Of course, before she can contemplate drowning Berry Junior in a stream somewhere, she has to deal with Brittany’s intense disappointment.

“Look, they didn’t give me any instructions!” Santana protests.  “It’s—I just wanted it to be a good first day, Jesus.”

“You  _cheated_.”

“I’m a  _cheater_.  Hello, you’ve known me most of your life.  How is this surprising?  The only reason you passed English last year is because I _helped_  you cheat.”

A look she can’t read passes over Brittany’s face, who then just says, “Maybe the reason we never worked before is because you don’t know how to be honest.”

Santana fights the urge to sigh desperately, and instead grits her teeth and says, “I’m sorry.  I’ll—be better, tomorrow.  What are we doing?”

Brittany practically beams when she says, “Tracking!  It’s going to be so awesome.  There’s like a trail through that forest on the outskirts of town and we have to identify all the plants we see and stuff.”

“That sounds… great,” Santana says, slowly, because saying  _fucking kill me now_  is really unlikely to get her any.

*

The one great advantage to doing this with Brittany is that Britt and Lord Tubbers have a serious, serious Discovery Channel problem.  Like,  _serious_.  It’s borderline an addiction, and Brittany blames that fat ass cat for it, and Santana just doesn’t have the heart to inform her that felines can’t turn on televisions, because, whatever.

The bad part of this is that getting her to watch something that isn’t a fucking narwhal mating is nearly impossible.  The good part, however, is that Brittany is some sort of fucking foliage wizard, who knows all sorts of random shit about the trees in the forest.  Okay, so maybe some of it isn’t _entirely_  true (“That’s a willow.  They originally grew in ancient Egypt, but then my friend Rachel brought them over from a trip to her home country and wrote a musical about them.”) but they’re with a bunch of nine year olds.  Who would even know?

“That doesn’t sound right,” Berry Junior grumbles in front of Santana, who is keeping up the rear of their trek.

It was deemed important that they all carry heavy backpacks with rations or something, so she’s sweaty and tired and cranky as hell, and it would be great if all the children could just bear that in mind, or something.

“Respect your elders,” she cranks, and the girl gives her the most  _ridiculous_ look of contempt.  It’s kind of epic—it’s Quinn Fabray levels of  _I wipe my shoes with you_.

“I would if you two made it seem like you knew anything about anything,” Michelle mutters, and Santana almost laughs before realizing that that would give off a very bad impression.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you’d signed up for the platinum version of the Girl Scouts program,” she snarks, instead.

“I didn’t sign up for anything,” Michelle says, cattily.  “My mom did.”

“Yeah, well, you’re a minor,” Santana says.

“So are you, genius,” Michelle says, but it’s with a little less conviction.

“I’m going to tie you to a tree and leave you here if you don’t shut up soon,” Santana says.

“Whatever, maybe the tree will actually teach me something.”

It almost counts as an amicable conversation.

*

“You bonded,” Brittany says, later that night, straddling Santana’s thighs.

That  _alone_  is so much more promising than the entire previous however many months that Santana swallows and says, “Nuh-uh”, because not much else is coming to mind.

“You so bonded.  She loves you.”

“She hates pretty much everything.  Except probably singing, because I swear to God, someone cloned Rachel just to torture me.”

Brittany’s hand tickles down her side, which again:  _promising_.  But then she says, “You know, maybe there’s reasons.  For why she’s so angry.”

“And I care because…”

Fuck.  It just slips out, but three seconds later, Brittany’s sitting down primly right by the headboard and saying, “We should probably just watch some TV.  We have a long day tomorrow.”

 _Fuuuuuuck_ , Santana thinks, and tries not to groan.

*

  
 _Finally_.  An activity she can get on board with.

Brittany, despite being the best dancer in the world, has the hand-eye coordination of a blind cat, so this is all on her, mostly.  

“Okay, I don’t want to get sued because one of you loses an eye, so you’re all going to stand behind that yellow line and just watch me, okay?” she says.

Eleven girls bat their lashes at her like little angels, sort of staring in awe.  One rolls her eyes.

“All right. So the first thing you need to do is string your bow—” she says, and places the bow flat on her lap and starts slowly explaining how they’re all going to set up their own little archery lesson today.

It goes swimmingly; three out of the twelve girls manage to hit target, and everyone does a fine job except for Berry Junior, of course, who cuts herself when the bow string snaps back on her first release.

Brittany goes incredibly pale at the sight of a few drops of blood welling up and Santana rolls her eyes and says, “C’mere.”

“This is why  _normally_  we do first aid class first,” Berry Junior says, sitting down and biting her lip in a somewhat shambolic attempt at bravery.

“Normally?”

Michelle doesn’t offer more information, but holds out her arm, and Santana carefully bandages it before tying it off with a little bit of tape.

“How’s that?”

Michelle gives her a slow, appraising look.  “It’s okay.”

“It’s okay?  Really?”  Santana says, clapping her hands together.  “My God, someone come here and record this conversation!”

“You know, it’s not nice to be so sarcastic to children.  My therapist told me that,” Michelle says, cradling her arm.

Santana sighs and says, “Okay, seriously though.  Can we just call a truce, or something?”

“No,” Michelle says.  “If I have to be here for two more weeks, you need to become a better troop leader.”

“I thought you didn’t even want to be here,” Santana points out.

Michelle says nothing in response to that, but instead goes, “Archery is a dumb thing to learn.  It’s not like we’re going to go shoot a deer with a bow and arrow.”

“You might,” Santana says.  “If you like, carry one with you from now on.”

“I think the other kids at school would think that that’s a little weird,” Michelle says, dryly.

Santana can’t help her laughter this time.

*

They’re lying side by side in Britt’s back yard, looking up at the tree house they built together when they were twelve, and Santana says, “Do we know anything about their families?”

“There are files,” Brittany says, running her fingers down Santana’s arm, before rolling over and looking at her.  “Cathy has them but we can see them.”

“Hm,” Santana says, and then blinks in surprise when Brittany flips on top of her and kisses her deeply.

She gets up and heads inside for a blanket without saying anything after a minute, and Santana cranes her head back to watch her go, wondering how that got her  _some_ points but not even enough to round second base.

*

Baking is really not her thing.  She’s not fucking Rachel, who spends so much time being a giant tool that she spends exactly as much time baking to apologize for it—and honestly, if it wasn’t for her amazing I’m Sorry cookies, Santana’s sure she would’ve remodeled the dwarf’s nose a few times by now—and she’s not fucking Quinn, either, who seems to think that learning how to bake is like the fifth cardinal rule of being a good stay-at-home mom from Lima, or whatever pathetic ideas she has these days about where her life is going to go.

They even have a  _recipe_  for the cookies, which is time-honored and if she screws it up she’ll basically be shitting on the bible of feminism.

Michelle and Audrey—her partners for the day—seem to be getting the hang of things much more quickly than she does, and for the sake of getting another one of those hot-ass make-out sessions tonight, Santana even says something about it out loud.

“You guys are pretty awesome at this.”

Michelle rolls her eyes even as Audrey—missing two teeth right now, but kind of adorable anyway—says, “Thanks, Santana.  I like baking.  My mom and I do it all the time.”

“What about you?” Santana asks Michelle.  “Are you just like some friggin prodigy at everything?”

Michelle stares at the egg she’s cracking and doesn’t really respond, one way or the other.

That’s the end of that discussion—at least until Audrey goes for a bathroom break with Cathy (who has come to see their ‘progress’, and looks like she’s torn between laughing and crying at the very much ridiculous approach that the troop is taking to this baking project), and Michelle stares mutely at the oven as the cookies are baking.

“What’s the deal with your family?” Santana asks, pulling over a stool and sitting down next to her.

“I don’t have to tell you anything,” Michelle says, still fixating on the oven.

“I could just torture it out of you.”

“That’s not legal.  I looked it up online.  You could go to jail,” Michelle says.

Santana blinks and then smiles, genuinely.  “You’re  _nine_.   _Why_ would you be looking up if torture is legal?”

“Because you kind of get this crazy look sometimes.”

Santana lowers the temperature on the oven as their egg timer goes off, and then glances at Michelle again.  “You know a lot about crazy looks?”

Michelle says, “Do you know what subtlety is?”

She’s just been completely  _had_  by a nine year old child, and she knows it, too. 

Michelle smiles after a moment and says, “You’re not so bad.  Sometimes.”

Well, then.

*

She gets a hand halfway up Britt’s stomach, and almost shudders in excitement because of it.

“You’re so cute,” Brittany says, patting her on the head like she’s a Golden Retriever, and then spends the rest of the night snuggling her.

 _Speaking of torture_ , Santana thinks, digging her nails into her own thigh.

*

The problem with all of this touchy-feely shit that Britt is clearly encouraging is that at some point, it kind of gets to her. 

Selina trips and busts her elbow and Santana actually sings a few lines of Songbird to her before gently putting some disinfectant on the cut.  That then leads to Brittany deciding that campfire singalongs are a mandatory skill for Brownies, and after the fifth rendition of Kumbaya, Santana almost voluntarily looks over at Michelle, who for once seems to be seeking her out in sympathy.

“I need the bathroom,” Michelle says, loudly.

“I’ll take you,” Santana says, immediately.

They head back over to the clubhouse, where Santana takes off her beret and fixes her hair—as far as she can—and Michelle washes her hands.  By silent agreement, they sit down on the front steps after that and Michelle scuffs her feet in the ground below.

“Are you and Brittany dating?” she asks, just when Santana thinks that  _for once_ , karma seems to be doing her a favor.

“What?” she asks, to stall.

Michelle’s toe scrapes backwards and forwards in the sand some more.  “Sometimes she looks at you like you’re the greatest.  Since you suck so bad, I thought it might be because she loves you or something.”

The last year has brought with it a lot of changes, and after coming out to the entire world at Nationals—okay, so she didn’t  _know_  that show choir nationals were actually televised events, but what’s done is done—she’s started feeling less and less like this is a big deal.  

“Yeah, we are,” she finally just says.

Michelle nods after a moment.  “She’s really pretty.”

“Yes, she is,” Santana says.

“My dad is gay,” Michelle says, after a moment.  “I don’t see him so much anymore.”

Another round of applause sounds at the campfire, and Santana sighs and says, “That’s a bum deal.”

“Yeah.  My mom’s not okay with it,” Michelle says.

Santana is about eight miles out of her depth at this point, but figures that the things that worked for her might also work for a nine year old.

“You mad about that?”

Michelle shrugs.  “I don’t care that he’s gay.”

“Yeah, good.  You shouldn’t.  There’s nothing wrong with being gay,” Santana says.

(For just one second, she wonders what Dave is spending his summer doing; but that part of her life’s over now, too, unless he decides he actually wants to talk about it to someone.)

“They fight about me, a lot,” Michelle says, even more quietly, as the singing picks up in volume again, almost drowning her out.  “I got tired of hearing them.  On the phone.  So I asked to go to camp.  But … I hate nature.”

Santana smiles.  “Well, you’re in the worst place  _ever_  if you do.”

“I wanted to go to band camp, but we couldn’t afford it,” Michelle says.

“What do you play?” Santana asks, and it’s weird, because the questions are coming out pretty naturally now.

“Guitar,” Michelle says.

“Cool.  My bro Puck plays guitar,” Santana says.

“Do I look like I care?” Michelle responds, sulkily.

Santana laughs and almost gives the kid a hug.

*

Brittany kisses her, and Santana says, “Wait, hang on, I want to run an idea by you.”

After a second, Brittany pulls back and says, “… seriously?”

“What?  I have ideas all the time,” Santana says, frowning.

“No, I just mean…”  Brittany smiles and says, “Okay, hang on.  I’ll go get Lord Tubbington, because he’s much better with constructive criticism than I am.”

Santana watches her go with a smile, and then whips out her phone to text some other people who might be able to help with her idea.

*

Michelle gives her a raised eyebrow in greeting the next day, but not much else.  Santana opts to let it go, because by God, she’ll win the little shit over before the end of camp even if she has to kill the other eleven of her troopers to do it.

“All right, guys,” Brittany says, clapping her hands.  “So—you probably know that we normally organize a food drive, at the end of camp season.”

A few of the girls nod. 

“Right, and that’s like—way important.  People are starving in Columbus.”

“Colombia,” Santana says, softly.

“Right, there too,” Brittany agrees.  “So like, we are going to do it.  But we want to do something else too, that we think you guys will like.”

Michelle looks at Santana skeptically, who just says, “It’s a surprise, for the last day of camp.”

“Who likes surprises?” Brittany asks.

Eleven girls jump up and start screaming like they’re at a Bieber concert—which,  _shit_ , Santana thinks, and texts Sam before she forgets—while one purses her lips and stares off stage left.

Maybe she should be thanking Rachel, who was clearly put on earth just to mentally prepare Santana for the joys of being a Brownies troop leader one summer of her life.

*

They  _would_ be making out.

But—advertising a food drive takes a little more non-nine year old participation than they thought it would, and so Santana’s fucking around on Tina’s copy of Photoshop while Brittany, Tina and Mike come up with a concrete plan for canvassing.  Or well, Brittany’s mostly trying to deduce if the fact that they’re Asian means they’re in general just better at maps, but nobody seems to really care.

This job has gone from being ridiculous to now being exhausting and time-consuming, and when Brittany puts a hand on her thigh at the end of the night, Santana says, “You’re  _kidding_ , right?”

“I like rewarding you,” Brittany says, with a small smile.

Santana considers her options, and questions her priorities pretty damn hard, but then finally sighs, “… can you give me a footrub?  All that fucking hiking is  _really_  starting to chafe, and if we’re actually going to have to word-of-mouth campaign, …”

The thing about Brittany is that maybe she’s a little crazy, at the best of times, and maybe she did actually trick Santana into taking on an asshole summer job with the promise of sex, but she also does things like give amazing footrubs and cuddle like a pro without being asked.

Maybe the Girl Scouts thing is a pretty fair trade, at the end of the day.

*

The food drive’s a pretty big hit.  

The girls all love it, having designed their own table layouts (which somehow distinguish between ‘spaghetti’ and ‘pasta’, but whatever, they can sort that out later) and have been given chairs to stand on and megaphones to call out to people with.

Santana and Brittany are mostly watching it go from the background while some older girls—Junior Scouts or whatever they’re called—weave through the crowd and direct the locals to the relevant sections of the community center.

“We did good,” Brittany says.

“Yep,” Santana says, watching carefully as a harried-looking lady comes in with a carrier bag full of cans of something, and beelines for Michelle and Audrey’s table without paying any attention to any of the signs.  

Her feet start moving before she even decides to go and see what’s up, because the look on Michelle’s face is trouble and Audrey (now with even one less tooth) looks blissfully unaware, and the woman that she’s pretty sure is Michelle’s mother is gesturing frantically about something.

“I told you five times,” Michelle says, when Santana’s in audible distance.

“You need to understand that some things are more important than your summer holiday activities, Michelle,” her mother says.

Santana takes a deep breath, wondering if it’s  _okay_  to tell a Brownie’s parent to basically get the fuck out of the room, but then just stands next to Michelle and says, “How’s your load so far?”

“It would be better if your posters weren’t so ugly,” Michelle says, snottily.

“ _Michelle_ ,” her mother says, immediately.  “I’m so sorry, she’s—”

“Maybe it’s that look on your face that’s putting them off,” Santana says, ignoring the woman completely.

Michelle fights a grin for a few seconds, but then says, “You can’t be mean to children.”

“I checked.  It’s not illegal.”

Michelle’s mother looks completely confused, and Santana smiles sharply at her after a moment.  “Hi.  I’m Santana.  My girlfriend and I are Michelle’s troop leaders.  I’m  _so_  happy to see that you’ve made it.  She’s one of our very best—as are you, of course, Audrey.”

“Of course,” Michelle’s mother says.

“She’s going to go places,” Santana says, giving the woman a sharp look.  “I can already tell.”

“Yeah, like away from you,” Michelle mumbles.

Santana tips her beret and then says, “Are those beans?  Because the protein station is two tables over, where that blonde woman is holding the clipboard.”

Michelle’s mother nods after a moment, and looks between them a few more times, but then wanders over to go and hand over her donation.

“That was lame,” Michelle says.  “You didn’t even mean any of that.”

“Are you a fu—are you a mind-reader now or something?” Santana asks.

“No, but it’s obvious you don’t like me.  You call me Manhands when you think I can’t hear you.”

Santana clears her throat.  “Actually, Manhands is… one of my best friends. You kind of remind me of her.”

“And you call her Manhands?”

Santana sighs.  “Yeah, that’s not okay, actually.”

“ _Duh_ ,” Michelle says, stacking a few more boxes of juice into the carrier tray that Audrey’s sorting through.  “I don’t know how you ever got this job.”

Santana smiles and says, “God’s way of punishing you for being such a little shit.”

“You can’t call me that.  And there is no God.”

Audrey is staring at both of them with a look of horror on her face.

“She’s nine, don’t take her word for it,” Santana says quickly, clasping a hand over Michelle’s mouth.  

“But—”

“God loves you.  Honest,” Santana says, glaring at Michelle, who glares back and bites at her hand.

Brittany is laughing at her from the other side of the room, phone out—and damn, she’s probably been taking pictures, or at least texting Quinn about how Santana can’t even control two nine year olds.

 _How the mighty have fallen,_  she thinks, but it’s kind of worth it for the small smile on Michelle’s face the rest of the day.

*

The rest of the night is spent sneaking in and out of the camp site to try and get everything set up for tomorrow, and she ends up falling asleep with Britt in a hammock that really is there only for scenic reasons—no survival in the American wild requires sleeping in a freaking hammock, anyway, so whatever.

It doesn’t really matter, when they spend some time talking about how tomorrow is going to go and whether or not this is the best summer ever, which is still an issue that is moderately up for debate until Brittany’s hand snaps the top button of her uniform and says, “I’m not giving you another foot rub unless I can rub something else first, okay?  Footrubs are just so not sexy, and I miss you.”

“Well, if you insist,” Santana says, pressing a kiss to her nose.  “And we’re ready? You’ve had enough time to like—think about stuff?”

Brittany half-shrugs and says, “I like you more now than ever.  That’s probably a good enough reason.”

Santana’s heart does something funny in her chest, but then Brittany’s tongue is snaking out, licking at her lips, and she can’t really be fucked to figure out if that’s something worth talking about right now.

She’s sung it at Brittany so many times that really, it shouldn’t be a big deal to say it, and so she does—when Britt’s slipping those incredibly long fingers into her underwear with ease and practice and comfort, which are all things that she thought would  _ruin_  sex for her, but when Britt smiles and says, “You’re amazing”, all she can think to say is, “I love you”, and that pretty much covers it.

Sex in a hammock is actually pretty dangerous, but they’ve on aggregate had enough practice to just about make it work with minimal hazardous swinging, and it’s nice and sweet and wonderful and  _yeah,_ maybe this stupid summer job was completely worth it, when Brittany sighs right by her ear and arches up into her hand.

Maybe everything’s been completely worth it, actually.

*

When Rachel shows up about half an hour before anyone else, with twelve Bedazzled microphones, Santana spontaneously hugs her and says, “That’s pretty fucking awesome, Berry.”

Rachel looks like she swallowed a bug for a few seconds, but then says, a little confused-sounding, “Well, anything for the future stars of tomorrow.  Providing they’re too young to ever be any real competition to me, anyway.”

Three weeks ago, Santana would have rolled her eyes and bitched about Rachel to Quinn; now she just tilts her head and says, “Are you unhappy about anything?”

Rachel’s baffled look is sort of worth the niceness.  “… no?  Should I be?”

“I don’t know, but if you ever want to talk,” Santana says, hesitantly… because maybe her mojo only works on cranky-ass nine year olds or something.

Rachel nods after a moment and then looks incredibly relieved to see Quinn.   _Well_ , Santana thinks.  There’s a fucking first.

*

Puck and Sam bring spare guitars and Finn promises to let everyone who wants to a go on his practice drums, which just leaves someone—Quinn, as it turns out—with the fun task of convincing Rachel to let the girls sing; wrestling the microphone away from her is pretty much a full-time job.

Brittany and Tina are dealing with admissions for the charity fundraiser gig they’re putting on tonight, and Santana is mostly just making sure that everyone’s dresses are a good fit and they all remember what songs they wanted to sing and when they’re meant to go on.

Michelle looks a little conflicted and then a lot nervous, as the night goes on, and Santana finally sits down next to her and says, “What’s up?”

“I don’t think they’re coming,” Michelle says, staring out into the crowd, which is fairly sizeable given how little time and how little  _talent_  they have on tonight.  (The latter, Rachel’s assessment; not hers, obviously, because _they’re nine_.)

Santana nods and says, “Well, you know what?”

“What—it’s  _okay_?  I’ll be fine, and it doesn’t mean that they don’t love me?” Michelle says, in a very rehearsed tone of voice that just drips with disappointment. 

“No.  I was actually going to say,  _fuck them_ , because they’re missing something totally amazing tonight.  You’re going to go out there and kick ass, and you’re going to get a standing ovation, and it’s going to feel great even though they  _suck_  and you deserve better parents,” Santana says.

(She  _did_  check the handbook, and it didn’t say anything about appropriate language being against the rules, so whatever.)

Michelle gives her a tremulous little smile.  “My therapist says that people who cuss a lot have a lot of bad feelings they don’t know how to deal with.”

“Or maybe I’m just a potty-mouth,” Santana says, because honestly, she’s pretty sure she’s processed enough for a lifetime at this point.

“You really shouldn’t ever be a troop leader again, you know.  We’re lucky we didn’t die,” Michelle says, scrambling to her feet and reaching for her guitar, which is like… the size of her entire body.

“You’re lucky I didn’t personally kill you,” Santana says, leaning over after a moment and fixing Michelle’s beret.  “There.  Now you look fifty percent less stupid.”

Michelle grins at her and says, “I’m going to be awesome.”

“Duh,” Santana says, and watches from their little back stage area as the brattiest kid she’s ever met hops up on a stool next to Sam and Puck and starts playing  _Led Zeppelin_  of all fucking things.

It’s pretty amazing, in a mindfuck kind of way.

*

Everyone helps clean up afterwards, and Brittany tells Santana that halfway through the gig, Michelle’s dad and his boyfriend showed up and watched the entire thing.

She almost gets emotional, which is just— _what_.

“We’re going to have kids someday,” Brittany tells her.

“Absolutely not,” Santana says, sniffing hard.  “Did you miss the part where they are fucking beyond dumb, generally horrible, and oh yeah, constantly in the way of my sex life?”

“You’re going to be such a good mom.  I love that about you,” Brittany says.

“I  _hated_ this job,” Santana says, wiping at her eyes.  “Are we even having the same conversation right now?”

“And I gave Michelle your email address.  She’s probably going to use it, so be nice,” Brittany says, rubbing Santana’s shoulders and kissing her cheek.

“This fucking sucks,” Santana sort of  _whimpers_.

“Want to do it again next year?” Brittany asks.

Santana sighs and rolls her eyes at Brittany’s knowing smile.  “Whatever.  Maybe.  But only because I look  _awesome_ in a beret.”


End file.
